Review – Captain Phillips

Though I was probably supposed to spend the second half of this movie on the edge of my seat waiting to see what would happen next, instead I remained comfortably reclined and ran numbers in my head. Somali pirates kidnap the captain of a cargo ship and demand $10 million. In response the Navy dispatches two destroyers, a small carrier and a SEAL team. Mightn’t haggling with the pirates have been cheaper? And if the counter-argument is that this response deters other pirates (unavailing in a part of the world where career options are often limited to “crime” and “starvation”), extend the question farther. Why are American taxpayers footing the bill to clean up a mess that might have been avoided in the first place if shipping companies would stop supplying vessels transporting millions of dollars in goods with less security than your bank’s local branch office? The dubious economics dovetail with the absurd twists of events to turn this into a farce, which makes it a shame that it was directed by a guy who specializes in Bourne sequels. See if desperate

New this week - A lot of bad movies

And last week. And the week before. They weren’t all terrible. Just most of them.

• Pacific Rim
• The Croods 
• Iron Man 3 
• Man of Steel  
• Carrie (2013) 
• Augustus 
• Last Stand 
• The Lone Ranger 
• Emperor 

On the brighter side, I finished reading a good book: Photojojo!

Review – Emperor

Here’s a closer look at the question of victors’ justice in post-WW2 Japan. General Bonner Fellers (Matthew Fox) must decide if Emperor Hirohito should be tried (and likely hanged) for war crimes. As is sadly usual for such stories, the plot is complicated by our hero’s love for a local woman. Otherwise, however, this is a reasonably compelling tale of slaughter and politics. Mildly amusing

Review – The Lone Ranger

Once again Gore Verbinski cranks out a movie you can see without actually seeing. Just imagine Pirates of the Caribbean with the pirate tropes unplugged and Western tropes installed in their place. The clichés and random silliness are spread so thick that the picture becomes an act of self parody; I’m a little surprised we weren’t treated to a scene reminding us where the title character takes his trash. They do a better job than the Lone Ranger of yesteryear at dealing with racism and injustice inflicted on Native Americans, though even that comes across as self-conscious. The thing that probably killed this with audiences was the script’s stubborn refusal to tell any kind of coherent story. Either that or people are finally getting tired of big budget Johnny Depp action comedies. Nah, gotta be the script. See if desperate

Review – Last Stand

High Noon gets a noisy new twist as not-aging-gracefully Arnold Schwarzenegger and his band of misfit deputies square off against a Corvette-driving drug dealer and an army of mercenaries. Stuff blows up. People get shot. Hero and villain spend what seems like a really long time driving around in a cornfield. You get what you paid for. Mildly amusing

Review – Augustus

Here’s a grim trudge down the familiar road of Augustus Caesar’s biography. This isn’t smart enough to be interesting or gross enough to be entertaining. Nor does it have enough content to justify its three-hour running time. See if desperate

Review – Carrie (2013)

What a disappointment. Chloe Grace Moretz has done good work elsewhere, and I was looking forward to seeing the lead in this familiar Stephen King tale played by an actual teenager. Sadly, she comes across as less of a high school outsider and more of a general dimwit, an angle that makes the character less sympathetic than she should be. The production’s good technical quality is largely undone by the aura of dumb teen drama. Though I’ve seen worse, I’ve also seen better. Mildly amusing

Review – Man of Steel

As I watched the latest reboot of a long-familiar story, I found myself distracted by comparisons between this outing and the Christopher Reeve version from 1978. The script and visuals of the 21st century go-around are a great deal more sophisticated, quite a departure from the moral-ambiguity-free Superman of yore. I was surprised that a Zack Snyder production sported plot twists worthy of J.J. Abrams, though overall the movie stuck close enough to genre conventions to pass as a standard action movie. Mildly amusing

Review – Iron Man 3

Each successive effort in this series becomes more Tony Stark intensive. Frankly, I would have gone in the other direction. I find the armor and the explosions a great deal more entertaining than a rich alcoholic’s personal demons. Although I had little interest in the characters, the battles were enough to keep me watching. Mildly amusing

Review – The Croods

I spent my childhood in the age of Goofus and Gallant, a time when media aimed at kids were expected to be educational and morally uplifting. I’d hoped that the farther we got past the hippie days the more movie studios would be able to relax and focus on entertaining storytelling. But if this production is any indication, the exact opposite is occurring. A computer programmed with a transactional-analysis-intensive psychology text could have written this dull-witted tale of cavepersons adapting to new circumstances. Some of the animation was cute, but that wasn’t enough to sustain the movie’s running time. See if desperate

Review – Pacific Rim

Well, that was noisy. Effects are the main draw for this extended tag team wrestling match between giant monsters and giant robots. Clearly the studio spent a lot of money on this, but the result plays like an extra-long episode of Johnny Sokko. Mildly amusing

New this week - Metamorphoses

Not a ton of new content this week. Indeed, the only movie I saw was I, Frankenstein, noteworthy only because it’s the first time in awhile that I’ve made it to a movie theater.

However, fans of The Metamorphoses Project will be happy to note that I finally managed to add the content from last year (both spring and fall). The project is now up to 23 images (four of which are my creations).